


A Betting Best Man

by sinisterkid92



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Man, Betting, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Set-Up, Swearing, Wedding, Wedding Planning, best woman, chronically single Rey, lawyer ben, messy Rey, rating could change in future but probably not, rating is mostly due to swearing, stuck-up Ben, womanizing Ben
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-05 02:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20481695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinisterkid92/pseuds/sinisterkid92
Summary: Ben Solo has something most men do not. He knows this, and he uses it. Ben is convinced that he can make any woman in the world fall for him. His childhood friend Poe takes him up on this claim and bets that he cannot make Rey Niima fall for him before Poe and Finn’s wedding 8 months later.Even though Ben dislikes Rey, and has always disliked her as much as she dislikes him, he knows that he can do it. But can he, really?





	1. January

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this prompt on reylo_promts on twitter (link is https://twitter.com/reylo_prompts/status/1167746016986185728) and thought "this is exactly what I want to write" so I did (am).
> 
> I'm posting as a write. Hoping it will not be too long between updates but please be patient with me. This first chapter is short, just setting things up, but chapters will have a bit more content as I go along (chapter two is like 3 times as long already).

One thing Ben Solo knew was that, according to most people, he had lived a blessed life. Wanting for nothing, and coasting by on the sheer luck of his parentage. He knew that his life appeared to be easy, but one thing he knew he was blessed with was the pick of the litter of women who fell in love with him. Maybe it was his legacy, his money, his personality, or looks, but there was something at least. Didn’t matter what it was, because whatever it was, he had it.

That particular week it was Jessika that had fallen for him. They had met at a showcase for some new outreach program and gotten inappropriately drunk together before she followed him home. He’d appreciated how she had invited herself in, and he had appreciated her body and dedication. However, while he liked being surrounded by people with ambitions there was something quite stale and impassionate of how she spoke of hers. People whose ambition was merely to be impressive and rich bored him. Jessika had that type of ambition, like he was a stepping stone and a conquest to hang up on a wall. Sure, she was falling for him but he did not fall for anyone, especially not someone like her.

It was therefore not a surprise to Poe when Ben said he was cutting things off with Jessika.

“I haven’t decided yet if you’re a comittmentphobe, or if you’re just that much of an asshole,” Poe said. Ben quirked an eyebrow, not unused to the bluntness of his childhood friend but still unamused by it. They had remained friends this long primarily out of habit and nostalgia, but also because they knew the other was the only one in the world who knew the other well enough to call them out properly. 

“She’s just after the money, and the name,” Ben said and huffed. “It’s not like there is a shortage of women out there.” Poe laughed at him, that dry type of laugh that was more tired than amused. 

“First off, it’s the Skywalker and Organa name that has legacy, you’re a Solo. Everyone and their grandmother knows who Skywalker and Organa were, but the racecar driver and failed entrepreneur Han Solo?” Poe shook his head. 

“Speaking about being an asshole,” Ben said, pointing towards him with the neck of the IPA beer bottle. 

“Second; there are women out there, but not all of them are going to fall for you and with the way you’re plowing through the city you’re going to have to travel all the way to Europe to find any woman willing to date you.” 

“You’re going to trash talk my father and then expect me to listen to you?” He took a big sip of his beer. He’d chosen this place, a bar not too far from his apartment building, for how easy it would be to escape his friend if he had to. It was looking like that emergency exit was approaching sooner rather than later. 

“You can’t go a day without insulting your dad, calm your tits.” Poe was decidedly not amused. “And there is a difference between women wanting to have sex with you and loving the idea of you, and a person actually loving you. Attraction and adoration is not love.”

“You are just jealous.” Ben knew Poe was trying to keep him grounded but sometimes his constant need to bring him down was annoying. Ben might’ve been cocky, but he was cocky because he knew it was true. 

“I am happily engaged to be married with my best friend, nothing about your sluttiness is something I want.” As if to underline the point Poe held up the silver ring on his left ring finger. “Speaking of that, I have no idea why but I want you to be my best man, can you do that?” Poe sounded tired, this evening had gone about how he expected but also not. 

“Wow,” Ben actually smiled. “Absolutely. Have you finally set the date?” Poe nodded, now a true smile on his face too.

“Yes, eight months from now, August 6th. Finally secured the venue after someone canceled their day there, we would’ve had to wait until next year otherwise.” Poe twisted in his seat, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Finn asked Rey to be his best woman.” 

The silence that fell between them was so heavy that despite the crowded and loud bar Ben expected he’d hear a penny drop on the table between them. Rey, he drew in a deep calming breath. Not his favorite person in the world. 

“Finn and I don’t want the traditional bachelor party which celebrates independence and saying goodbye to unmarried life, we’re so happy to get married we want to celebrate that instead. So we want our bachelor party to be together. And that means you and Rey working together on that.” He said it carefully, like he knew what a minefield he was treading into. “You’re my best friend since childhood, and she’s his best friend since childhood, it has to be you two, unless you feel that you can’t?”

That snapped Ben out of it. “No, no I’m not going to let Rey ruin your wedding, I will be your best man.” 

Poe rolled his eyes at the jab at Rey. “Thank you.” Then he got an idea. Like a lightning from a clear blue sky it struck and he smiled deviously. “You know how you said that you can make any woman fall for you?”

“Yeah…” Ben didn’t like his tone, didn’t like it at all and he didn’t even know what it was about. He could guess, if he wanted to, but he did not want to guess. Not at all. 

“I bet that you can’t make Rey fall in love with you.” The beer felt like a thousand fire ants in his nose he snorted it out. He grabbed for a napkin to clean up the mess on his face. Poe was unphased and continued. “If she falls in love with you, proper in love not just boning you, I will give you the 11th grade trophy.” 

There had been one major topic of contention in their decades long friendship, and that was the 11th grade trophy for senior prank day. The two of them had joined together on their prank and then Poe had taken the credit, claiming he had done most of the work, when Ben had been the one to come up with the idea. They never mentioned the trophy anymore because of the fighting that ensued because of it. Finn had declared it a no-go zone in college.

“Easy,” Ben said, holding his hand out to seal the bet. 

Rey was the one woman he knew it would take a lot of work for her to fall for him. They were oil and water, and now he had to invent dish soap to make the two of them get along. For the first time in their lives. But it could be done. Women fell for him like dominoes, and secretly she probably had a massive crush on him. That was normal. 

But Rey was anything but normal. 

“You have until our wedding, if she’s not in love with you by then the trophy is mine, and me and Finn get to use your holiday house for all holidays during our first year of marriage.”

“What, why?” That seemed a bit unfair.

“If you win the bet you get the trophy and Rey has fallen for you, if I win I need to get something.” 

“Fine.” They shook on it.


	2. February

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our first Rey and Ben interaction....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't wait to share this so I'm uploading from my phone at work. If the format is shite it's because of that. Apologies.

One of his worst habits was smoking. He started at boarding school when he was 14 because everyone else did it, and hadn’t quite managed to quit the habit yet. The past few years he’d cut down significantly, the three packs a week turned into smoking just when he drank. With everything that was going on at work he’d picked up smoking again as an everyday thing, and he hated it as much as he loved it.

The office building he worked in had a balcony on the south side, just at the end of the hall where his office was. That week he’d escaped to that balcony far too many times, so often that it didn’t work as an escape anymore. The downside of working with analysts was that they quickly caught onto new patterns, and knew where to find him when his office was empty. Some even showed up to the balcony for impromptu meetings they insisted needed to be held right at that moment. If murder wasn’t illegal he knew what he would’ve done.

This was the reason why he was looking forward to getting off work at five o’clock on the dot that evening to have dinner with Finn and Poe. Even if Rey was there. He’d not forgotten about the bet. In fact, it hadn’t been far from his mind since. While the trophy was a nice trophy to win, having Rey fall for him was what he really wanted. Not because he had feelings for her, god no. It would just be nice to have her snotty attitude take a break and for her to behave like a human for once. While he hadn’t asked for her opinion on him, it wasn’t hard to guess that “stuck up rich boy” was high up on the list of reasons. Maybe because she’d shouted it at him once when she’d had a few too many at the last New Year’s Eve party. 

They hadn’t seen each other since then, and the past 6 weeks without her had been good for him. Especially with everything going on at work. He didn’t need to hear her moral objections to what he did for a living. She worked with machines, there wasn’t a lot of moral ambiguity with that unless you feared that the machines would one day gain sentience and take over the world. Neither of them were conspiracy theorists, so at least they had that in common. 

He was narrating an argument about exactly this with Rey in his head as he snuffed out a cigarette in the ashtray when he caught sight of bright red in the periphery of his eyes. Without making eye contact with the man that burst through the balcony doors he quickly slipped past him and down the hallway to his own office.

“Stop running you fucking child!” Hux yelled behind him. 

“Gotta run Hux, have Anya check my schedule for Monday,” he yelled over his shoulder. At any other work place the yelling would have been out of place, but at First Order Corporate Law it was just a day like any other. 

“For fuck’s sake Solo.” He heard the distinct sound of Hux running towards him. The man was in his mid 30s and had yet to figure out how to coordinate his body as he ran. “‘All of our schedules have been wiped for Monday, Snoke wants us all on board with Canto Bight. The Resistance has counter-sued, they say they have evidence CB has knowingly sold weapons to known terrorists.”

“Fuck.” He opened the door to his office, leaving it open behind him for Hux to follow. “Do we know what they have, is it true?”

“CB is claiming that the suit is bullshit,” Hux said, sitting down on the leather couch on the side of the room, a couch Ben had slept on far too many times. 

“But?” He asked, feeling it hanging in the air. 

“They do have contractors, who they do no checks on to see where the weapons end up, and we’ve checked their contracts and they are very unclear on their anti-terrorism work. So while CB as an entity is clean, they only sell weapons to contractors, they do no checks on their contractors at all.”

“So, they could be selling weapons to terrorists?” Ben liked clear-speak, no euphemisms, no tripping around the subject. Straight to the point. Give him no bullshit and he will give no bullshit in return. 

“Maybe,” Hux said after a long silence. “Which is why all of our schedules are cleared for Monday, and why you should definitely take your laptop home over the weekend.” 

“Sometimes I fucking wonder why I work here,” Ben mumbled, reaching for the thick folder Hux held out for him. Hux and Ben were technically at the same level, but as far as favoritism went Ben had ended up having more responsibility than Hux.

“Because the pay is damn well worth it.” Hux laughed as he left Ben’s office, shutting the door behind him as Ben opened the folder. 

“I’m starting to doubt it,” he said to no one as he eyed through the first page. The counter-suit. If he thought this month had been a lot he now knew he was in for a hell of a year. He glanced up at the clock, it was fast approaching five so it was best to leave now for Poe’s place. He knew he should have stayed at work but he definitely wanted out of there as soon as possible. With any excuse.

He packed up his bags with the laptop and all the papers and books he knew he would have to work through during the weekend. There was no excuse to come unprepared on Monday, but if he was going to be working all weekend there was no way he would miss this dinner with Poe. Even if he was annoying. Even if Finn and Rey were annoying. It was a break from this. 

Despite the traffic while driving through downtown he reached the suburbs by six thirty, with enough time to spare to run into a supermarket to get a good glass of wine as a gift. If Rey was going to fall for him he had to start small, and that began with a getting the red pinot that he knew she had a weak spot for. He paid attention. If more straight men knew how important paying attention was no man would be left unlaid. Until then, he would reap the benefits of doing what other men did not. It worked in his favor. 

Poe met Finn in college. Before Finn Poe thought he was into women, but Finn changed all of that for him. It was love at first sight and everything that made Ben shudder. He was a pessimist, didn’t think it would last between them once college was over and Finn went to grad school while Poe started working. But it did. They bought a small house in the suburbs, fixed it up into their dream home, and got engaged as soon as it was legal for them to marry. It was everything Ben did not want.

He had dinner with them once a month, or tried to anyway. 

Rey was already there when he walked into their living room, sitting on the couch with a glass of red already in her hand. She eyed the label of the bottle he brought without giving him a single readable expression. Whatever she thought of it he was not privy to know. Not yet, anyway. 

“Beer, red, white, or something stronger?” Finn shouted from the kitchen as Poe relieved him of the bottle and disappeared into the kitchen as well. 

“Water, driving,” he shouted back, sitting down on the armchair that used to be in his apartment before. He’d given it to Finn and Poe when he moved places and decided to invest in new furniture, and he had to say the retro style suited their place much better, with mismatched furniture everywhere. It wasn’t distasteful, or evidently curated and stylized mismatched, it was just homely. It was Finn and Poe’s place.

“Hi,” he waved awkwardly at Rey, who simply nodded a hello in return. 

“Responsible,” she said, and he furrowed his eyebrows in question at her. “The not drinking and driving.” He liked her accent, it was more prominent than Finn’s, not as diluted from years of living in the states. He would never tell her that, unless it meant she would fall for him. 

“A lawyer getting a DUI is one of the most hypocritical things I know, I would prefer to avoid that scandal.” 

“At least you’re not rotten all the way through,” she said into her glass as she took another sip of it. Her cheeks were delightfully pink, he suspected this was not her first glass. 

“I count that as an accomplishment,” he said, biting back the insult of the British that was sitting at the back of his tongue. He liked his cottage and would prefer to spend his Christmas there, as he had done for all Christmases since he got the place five years ago. That was his tradition. 

“Okay, no murders yet,” Finn said as he walked into the living room. “Hey man.” He slapped Ben’s hand instead of shaking it, and by now Ben was used to Finn and never expected his hand to be shaken. It was a sign of camaraderie, Poe had explained to him, the British did that. However, none of the Brits he’d met through work chose a hand clap and a hug over a handshake. Maybe it was the camaraderie that was missing. 

“How are you doing?” Ben hated chit chat and the aimless pleasantries that preceded all meaningful conversation. But he knew he had to do it, had to follow the routines and social rules to get to the part that he wanted. No one was ready to dive into the deep end without the lifevest of scripted talk. 

“I’m good, I’m good, a lot of wedding planning going on so that’s a lot, but I’m good.” Finn was smiling ear to ear, looking happier than Ben had seen him in a long time. “How are you?”

“I’m good, work is keeping me busy.” He thought of the box he had finally decided to pack everything he needed, which was now sitting in the trunk of his car. He had fantasized about quitting the whole car ride here. Not that he would do it, but fantasies were like therapy. 

“I almost didn’t expect you to come,” Poe said as he carried a large sauté pan filled to the brim with food. 

“Hux gave me a shit ton of work that I have to get done during the weekend just before I left today, figured that was a better reason than any to come here.” He stood up to check the dinner that was being served.

“Paella, recipe courtesy of the BBC,” Poe said. “Okay, come let’s dig in I’m starving.”

As they always did at dinners, Ben sat next to Poe at one side of the table, and Rey beside Finn on the other side. Years of dinners together had resulted in assigned seats, because they were just four people and it was easier that way. Ben liked that structure, however small it was he appreciated knowing what to expect. 

“Okay, wedding planning,” Finn said, and to Ben’s delight skipping all of the small talk and getting to the point. “We have to get dresses and suits ordered soon, so next Saturday-” Ben leaned back in his chair and smiled as Poe handed him a plate of food piled up on it. Some moments he felt like he found the place he belonged in, and this moment was it. 

He watched on and ate as Poe and Finn discussed their plans, what needed to be done, and delegated tasks to him and Rey. They interjected additional details with ease as the other spoke, so insync that they hardly noticed the interruption as one. Sometimes he, or Rey, came with ideas, information, or just giving them their availability. 

“Okay, so the last weekend in July is the bachelor party, we’re keeping it local because from an expense point of view, and practicality between where all the guests live, it’s best to stay in the city,” Finn said, flipping through a planner where every page seemed to be teeming with text odd pieces of loose papers held in place with a paperclip. It looked like those ancient planners his mother used when he was a kid, when computers were calculators and not everything they are now. 

“That’s the 29th to 31st,” Rey asked, more to confirm as she typed furiously on her phone. She was aggressive in everything she did, Ben had noticed a long time ago. He had no idea how she managed as a mechanical engineer with all that force and aggression. Somehow she did, and he knew she was damn good at it. 

“Yep,” Poe said, looking over at Ben. “I know it seems far away, but we really need to start planning and booking it now. August is wedding season and though we’re not contending for strippers, we do want to do something fun.” 

Ben had never been apart of a wedding before, he honestly had no clue of what was expected of him. He hadn’t planned a party since he left law school but he was looking forward to making it something that everyone attending would remember forever. Once upon a time he had been the king of parties and it was high time to regain that title. 

“So, I guess the two of us should meet up and get planning?” Rey said, leaning back in the chair in a way that could almost pass as casual if it didn’t look so awkward. Ben nodded, tersely. “Neutral ground,” she added.

“Coffee shop or bar?” Neither of their places, that was as far from neutral as it got. He wasn’t there yet, it would take a while before Rey would warm up to him as a person, only then could he start the process of getting her to fall for him. That’s when their apartments would be handy. He already had a recipe to wow her with one late weekday evening as they planned the details of one part of the full day of partying. 

“Bar,” she said. “Fuck knows I need a drink if I’m gonna spend a night with you.” He caught the glare that Finn sent her way, and the sheepish grin she flashed back at him as she hid her face in the wine glass. 

“We sure do have the worst best friends,” Poe commented, half in jest and half serious, and both Ben and Rey burst into laughter. The one thing they could agree on was that they disliked each other, and their sense of humor. Things they were agreeing on were starting to pile up, and that was disconcerting. 


	3. March Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of back story, a little bit of Rey and Ben arguing, and a little bit more insight into how Ben actually feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter won't be up for a couple of days, just a head's up. If there are some typos in this please ignore, I am the embodiment of exhaustion at the moment.

It was their third time meeting up, late on weekend nights when both of them wore black and blue eye-bags and patience as thin as a spider’s web. He couldn’t help but notice how good she looked when she pulled her hair out of the messy bun, but he chalked that up to psychology. He was trying to get her to fall for him, so naturally his brain was searching for attraction in her. 

“Bar hopping is the most unimaginative idea I have ever heard,” Rey said, grabbing the pen out of Ben’s hand and scratching the idea out on the notepad with thick heavy lines that almost pierced the paper. “God this is so useless, what are we even doing?” She fisted her hands in her hair, screwing her eyes shut suppressing a screaming. He did think she was a tad overdramatic, but he wasn’t the person to judge, he’d smashed his favorite coffee cup earlier that day after a meeting with Canto Bight. Meeting up with Rey was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Since you’re doing amazing at shooting down every idea I have, can you please come up with something yourself.” He shoved the notepad in her direction, tired of everyone who seemed to be out for him. Was he really that terrible of a person that the only two people in the world who tolerated his presence were Finn and Poe? He really hated the bet he’d taken now. 

“They’re Finn and Poe, we know them,” she hadn’t given up yet, and he just wanted to go home. He was ready to jump on the first idea she had. Considering all the brilliant ideas of his she’d shot down she must’ve been cooking up something amazing. 

“I’m getting us both stronger drinks,” Ben said as she started to scribble on the notepad.

“Oh, yes please,” she mumbled into the notepad. She gave no order to what she wanted, so he got the two of them two shots of vodka each. 

As he placed them on the table in front of them she looked up at them with raised eyebrows and a confused smile. 

“It’s wednesday,” she said, as if that should mean anything.

“Yep, it’s wednesday and here we are fighting, as always, about stupid things, so let’s drink and hopefully we’ll both chill the fuck down a bit.” She mulled over it for a moment, tapping the pen against the paper a few times before she reached out for one of the shot glasses.

“Since you paid.” She gave him a salute with the glass and tipped it down her throat. He followed suit. “I have an idea.”

“Already?” He placed the next shot in front of her and raised his, waiting for her to copy. She took the next shot with him, grimacing as it burned down her chest, and he did the same. “Not my favorite, but it does the trick.”

She ignored him, putting the notepack back in between them. “Poe and Finn both wanted to be pilots in the army, but with the whole don’t ask don’t tell thing… you know. I’m friends with some flight engineers, so I could ask them if they can try a flight simulator or ride along in a fighter jet, whatever is possible. Like that could be the start of the day.”

“That’s…” he searched for words. “That’s brilliant, I love it.” He looked at the notepad where she had scribbled down the names of a few places. “Is this where that would be? Okay, let’s start from there and we can work ourselves into the city during the day. That’s really good.”

Rey blushed and smiled at him. He’d never seen her blush, not at him anyway. Not for him. He bit his lip to keep his smile from growing too wide, and picked up the pen and opened the map on his phone to orient them better. 

“For lunch, there’s a place here that does amazing sandwiches, like pretty much every sandwich you can think of they do. They both love sandwiches.” He pulled up the website with the menu. “The only downside is that they don’t have any seating, everything is to-go.”

“That’s called a picnic.” She showed a park close to the sandwich shop. “I’ve been there, the garden is amazing in the summer, we could bring games with us and have the sandwich shop as a meet-up for the rest of the bachelor-party.” 

“I told you shots would help,” he said as he wrote down everything they’d agreed upon. 

“I came up with the idea before the shots,” she said, a soft blush was still on her face but he knew it wasn’t because of him. She always turned flush from alcohol, the rose colored cheeks a dead give-away that she was tipsy, or drunk. 

“Okay, so we’ve got the day planned. I think we should hold-off with planning the evening until you’ve checked with your friend.” He paused. “I will research like lawn games and things like that and purchase those things, because I think Finn and Poe would love that, no matter what. As for the evening… maybe the traditional route of dinner and partying? I have contacts, getting us in at a nice restaurant and club can be my job.”

She drummed her fingers against the table. “Write a list of restaurants and clubs you have contacts for for next time we meet up, we can go over them. That way we call the place we like the most first and then work our way down the list.” He knew she was looking to keep power, to push him and see if he pushed back. He knew, and resisted the bait 

“Sure.” He couldn’t let the night end yet, he would never get her to fall in love with him if she avoided him. He had to spend time with her. It had been 2 months already with no progress. He wanted to blame work but really there was no excuse. He’d already had Grace and Bianca fall for him, and in his bed, but made no progress with Rey. Shit. 

"Why do you always do that?"

The fuck? “What?” What had he done now? He’d been perfectly nice to her and now she was acting like a petulant child. 

“Act like I’m asking of something huge when I just want to be kept in the loop and a part of the decision making.” She was peeling the sticker off of the beer bottle she’d been drinking before, the condensation had already curled the label off in places. The way she was doing it was doing it was less of a nervous habit and more like she had to keep her hands busy enough to not strangle him.

“I said sure, I don’t know what else you want.” She rolled her eyes. 

“You are acting like you’re trying to placate me so that I’m not going to cause a scene, you didn’t agree out of respect for me, you’re not that hard to read, Ben.” She tore a big chunk of the label off. 

“I’m trying to keep a truce long enough for our friends to have an awesome bachelor party,” he said and huffed. He knew he could get her to fall in love with him if only she just chilled for long enough to listen to what he was actually saying. 

“Whatever,” she said, but let their argument taper off into silence.

He’d first met Rey almost a decade ago when he was a junior in college and Poe had started dating Finn. She’d tagged along for a few parties but was always the shy girl in the corner who didn’t say much. She was a freshman in a completely new country, and he felt sympathy for that. While boarding school wasn’t another country, it might as well have been, and Rey looked about how he felt when he first got to boarding school as a kid. 

For a brief moment in time he actually thought she was attractive, considered asking her on a date. Then she got her voice back, started talking, and she never stopped. There wasn’t an atom in this world that she didn’t have an opinion about. It wasn’t like he was one of those men who couldn’t stand a woman having opinions, his mother would’ve skinned him for that. She just happened to have far too many opinions on him, and a severe lack of filter. 

He could take being called a simpleton frat boy by her, that was par for the course. However, when she started to attack his career goals that’s when she went too far. Rey didn’t challenge people, she attacked them like a dog with a bone. There was no chill setting on her. He got it, she was pure and knew right from wrong when he struggled with the concept, but the more she argued about it the less he cared. 

Their first blow-out fight was two weeks after they met in the courtyard outside the classroom windows for the business econ class he was supposed to be in. He wanted to say he didn’t remember what it was about. If he didn’t remember he didn’t have to feel like h was the asshole. 

“How about next time we do a coffee shop in the day time?” he suggested. “On a weekend.” He’d been thinking about quitting his job a lot lately. He thought about it five times before getting out of bed in the morning, between each slow drag of the cigarette on the tiny balcony that overlooked the grey murkiness that was early spring in the city. It all looked decayed. He hated this time of year. He’d quit his life entirely, not like with death but just lying down for a few years to get some rest. 

He needed to get his head sorted again. He hated the pills, needed to avoid them. They felt like failure even though he intellectually knew there was nothing wrong with them. They were just too strong when he started on them. His dad liked how Ben stopped throwing fits all the time, how mellow his son became. Ben just felt hollow and trapped, like a single drop of water could quiver inside his mind and create a deafening sound. 

“I like Benny and Jenny’s on 5th,” Rey offered, her voice lower this time. Shit. He did that. “They’ve got really nice tea. Heard their coffee is good too.”

“Right, sometimes I forget you’re British,” he said, trying to joke. It felt flat but Rey pulled the sides of her mouth into something that almost looked like a smile. 

“You do know you’re an asshole, right?” She didn’t say it like it was an insult, it was a genuine question. He stopped for a moment, blinked at her as he thought of a response. 

“You do know you you’re really, really, antagonistic?” He countered back. Once again there was silence between them, lasting for a few seconds as both of them watched each other with narrowed eyes, waiting for any type of reacting.

Then Rey jumped into action. “Nice seeing you Ben, as always,” the sarcasm was dripping from every word, “but right now I really prefer the company of my own bed.” She pulled that silly hat he detested on the top of her head – it was an orange and beige knitted disaster home-project that she’d taken on during sophomore year of college with tasseled ear muffs, and a braid attached to the top seam. 

“Ditto.” He wrapped that skinny scarf he got at Ralph Lauren around his neck with the brown leather gloves the assistant insisted he buy to match it. For being March it was far too cold still. 

“See you saturday!” Rey said as she started to walk away from him.

“Sunday!” he shouted back. All she gave him was a thumbs up. With those big ear-muffs he doubted she could hear him. Maybe that was the purpose of them.


End file.
